Sabrina Galloway, a rising sophomore at the University of Houston, wanted to make sure that Galveston Bay-area shrimpers had a new voice at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission's annual public hearing.

The 19-year-old had hoped that the "only girl on the dock" - a fourth-generation shrimper who had worked opening seasons since she was 15 - might make a difference at the podium.

But the trajectory of her family's history shifted on Monday, two days before Sabrina, her father and grandfather were scheduled to address commissioners.

Since before daybreak, she'd been with her dad on his boat, a 41-foot vessel called the "Mr. Anthony." Her 13-year-old brother, Cody, and a deck hand also were aboard.

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Funeral services forRonald Galloway Jr.

Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Old River Baptist Church, 12948 FM 1409 in Dayton, followed by a procession leading to a 1:30 p.m. graveside service at the Earthman Memory Gardens Cemetery, 8624 Garth Road in Baytown.

Support the Galloway Family:

Friends have organized an online fundraiser with a $20,000 goal to assist the Galloway family, which is incurring funeral, medical and vessel salvage expenses. Visit www.gofundme.com/d88y64 to contribute.

Around 3 p.m., as they navigated Cedar Bayou in the Houston Ship Channel, the vessel suddenly went sideways.

Sabrina was standing beside her father, Ronald Lynn Galloway Jr., as they "did a couple of circles on the boat" and remembers grabbing a window to steady herself.

The trawler shifted again and turned on its side. Water began to fill the cabin.

Her father started yelling to the others: "There's the door. There's the door." Then, water went over his head.

The jaws of life

Cody shoved his fist through a window and, Sabrina recalled in an interview, she boosted him through. The deck hand went next. On his way out, he accidentally kicked her in the face - knocking her back into the engine room, she said.

That's when everything went black, except for a small beam of light.

"I kept screaming and banging and yelling for my dad," Sabrina remembered. "Then the water kept coming in and coming in."

By that time, she could hear her brother's muffled pleas from the trawler's bottom, which was now above water: "The boat is filling up with water. You have to get out. Sabrina, you have to swim out!"

But she was trapped in a compartment. As she beat on the walls, panicked, her brother and the deck hand flagged down a fisherman who was able to enlarge that small hole, giving her more light and air. Sabrina thinks the Good Samaritan's name was Steve.

"He stayed and talked to me for two hours until the Coast Guard was able to figure out how to get me out," she said.

His words comforted her, as did her own prayers and spiritual resolve.

"I wasn't alone in there. Jesus was with me, and I know that my Dad was with me the whole time," Sabrina said. "If God was ready for me to go, I was ready, because my life was his."

By 5:45 p.m., rescuers arrived and sent down an oxygen mask but told her to place it near, but not on, her face. She later learned that they were rightfully worried that she had been inhaling carbon monoxide.

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Finally, the jaws of life wrenched through the boat's base and opened a hole large enough to extract her.

All three survivors ended up at Bayshore Medical Center in Pasadena.

A tribute to her father

Sabrina was blinded for a while because the fuel tank leaked into the area where she was trapped and diesel covered the mucus in her eyes.

When her mother, Jessica Galloway, got to her bedside, all Sabrina wanted was answers about her father.

"Mom, did they find daddy? Did they find daddy?" she asked. "And she told me: 'Baby, there's only two options - either they'll find him or he's gotten his wings and he's with Jesus and either way, I'm happy.'"

Sabrina spent the night in the hospital to be detoxed from chemicals and to stabilize her carbon monoxide level with 12 hours of oxygen.

Sabrina's grandfather, Ronald Galloway, Sr. - a shrimper for more than four decades - used his own vessel to search for his missing son on Tuesday morning after official searchers stopped looking. The 64-year-old, who runs Captain Ron's Shrimp in Baytown, found his son's body inside the pilot house of the capsized boat just before noon.

The Coast Guard is investigating the accident.

Ronnie Jr., 42, started shrimping when he was 18 and made it his career. His funeral services are Saturday. He also is survived by three other children: Jesse, also 19; Lauren, 17, and 16-year-old Alexis. The family is from a Chambers County hamlet, Old River-Winfree.

School starts on Monday and Sabrinahas decided to continue to pursue a degree in elementary education. Persevering will be a tribute to her father. She is the first in her family to receive a university education.

Good grades in high school helped her win a Terry Foundation Scholarship - which covers the full cost of a 4-year education.

"The day I got my scholarship letter, my dad sat right down with me. He had tears in his eyes and said: 'This is everything you have worked for, and I am so proud of you,'" she remembered.

'Thank you for listening'

Her father's death didn't stop Sabrina from advocating for the shrimping community the day after his body was found.

Through his own grief, fisherman John Harrison read her prepared speech to the commission. Sabrina pleaded for regulators to reconcile old laws that set net size and catch limits to 2014 realities.

"She felt so strongly about what's going on here today, she asked me to read her speech to you," Harrison told commissioners. Then, reciting the teen's words and breaking down, he concluded: "I wish I could be there to read this. My daddy wanted this speech read today. He and I worked on it and his speech for months, and I thank you for listening."